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The history of the Hospes Lategum can be easily broken into four separate eras

These eras are divided by our three great migrations… the First, Second and Third Exodus respectively

Each Exodus was prompted by a major threat to our existence.

The first by the pending eruption of Vesuvius in AD 79

The second by the threat of invasion by the Ottoman Empire and the threat of destruction at the hands of Prince of Walachia, Vlad Dracul…. better known as Vlad the Impaler

And the third Exodus was motivated by the German war machine and it's attack on Britain

Before considering these Eras, let us discuss how the Lategum came to Earth.

The start of the story of the Lategum actually begins on another planet.

As we have long since known, the Lategum are extraterrestrial in nature, and as far as we are aware, they were originally from a planet known as Zirallia.

They evolved there in symbiosis with the race who inhabited that planet. Zirallians.

Zirallians join with Lategum in the same way as we do, with some slight differences.

When Zirallians developed deep-space flight and interstellar travel, they became spaceborne explorers and colonists. Sometime around 500 B.C.E., the Zirallians visited Earth.

At that time, they encountered two other extraterrestrial races who were also investigating Earth. The Luxor, and the Ulympeans. These two races were seeking to enslave the human race, and were already being worshiped as gods by the ancient peoples.

The commander of the Zirallian ship investigating Earth decided to intervene and attempt to drive off the two other races. He did so by ordering one of the ship's engines detached, and launched towards the Moon, creating a massive crater on detonation. It was a bluff show of strength, the Zirallian vessel was actually unarmed.

He then sent a transmission of ultimatum to both the Luxor and the Ulympeans to vacate the solar system and not return. Both races complied and fled our solar system.

Unfortunately for the Zirallians, their ship's warp drive developed a fault shortly after this happened. The Zirallian ship was torn apart when they attempted to use their warp drive to leave Earth. One piece of debris from the ship was the Lategum chamber, a reinforced capsule that contained an on-board Lategum collective.

The Lategum capsule crashed and split apart in a crater on the side of the volcano Vesuvius.

That Lategum Collective is the same one that is now contained in level 2, connected to the joining chamber.

This is where the story of the Hospes Lategum, our order itself, starts.

The first era began with the first joining of human and Lategis

A simple shepherd was tending his flock and discovered a pool of black liquid which he thought to be oil. In his effort to collect a jar of oil from the pool the first joining began by accident

While he did not know what he had come upon at first, he came to accept the blackness coating him and discovered its unique properties mostly by accident.
In fact, the first many joinings were the result of fortunate accidents… accidental discoveries and the like

So, from the time The First was joined in the fifth century BCE until the dawn of the first century CE, much of what our society learned and did was the result of serendipitous accidents and unintended discoveries, but as our numbers grew, order was needed. The first was unanimously proclaimed leader and things were peaceful in Pompeii until Vesuvius began to rumble in 78 AD
The Lategum still resided in a pool on the side of Vesuvius at that point and they sensed the danger. They shared their knowledge with the First and he gathered his eldest advisors to form a plan to preserve the Lategum and our fledgeling society.
This was the end of the First Era and the start of the First Exodus.
Sadly, much of our knowledge of what daily life in Pompeii was like has been lost. We hope to regain that knowledge, and I maintain close contact with the scholars who study Pompeii’s ruins.
We loaded amphorae filled with Lategum onto ships and sailed from Pompeii, south around the tip of the Italian peninsula then East. The ships landed in Durres in what is now Albania and the Hospes and the amphorae filled with Lategum made their way to Dacia (now Romania).
We settled in a small trading village which eventually grew into the city of Targoviste, but of 700 hosts, only 400 made it. 300 hosts, Including the First, had been lost along with several amphorae filled with Lategum.
The First had foreseen this possibility, though, and had designated several possible successors, one of whom had made it to Targoviste. She became the first Alpha
Understanding that we would need order to rebuild and thrive, she tested all the surviving hosts and the strength of their bonds with their Lategum. She then ranked them and assigned them responsibilities.
This was the true birth of our society as we know it today, and our first Alpha made great pains to ensure that we fit in with the evolving society around us, as we had come to fit in among the people of Pompeii.
And we really did well in that region as it changed… Dacia… Roman Dacia… Bulgaria… Walachia… all names that the region was known by as we resided there.
We were there for nearly 1400 years before politics and war threatened us. The greatest threat came from the crown prince of Walachia, however… Vlad the Impaler. He knew of our longevity and craved it for himself. He refused the joining, however, and chose instead to kill us and drink our blood in the vain hope of gaining some measure of our perceived immortality.
And so the Second Era ended in blood and the Second Exodus began, but we had no ships this time and had to flee, hiding in merchant caravans travelling west
We fled across the breadth of Europe and then across the English channel to finally settle in the South of England.
Our new home was named by our second and current Alpha, the first Anthropoid host ever.
We settled near Bredhurst, in the marshy lowlands where few ventured. We raised sheep and grew small crops and avoided being dragged into the Cousins War by a mix of carefully selected allegiance and timely offering of provisions of food and wool to the Yorkist forces of the Earls of Warwick and March.
We also provided valuable intelligence to the Yorkists of the discontent of Sir Edmund Grey, who switched banners from Lancaster to York to get away from the king and avoid a suspected assassination attempt. In so doing we gained our most valuable ally in Britain - one who's family would help guard our interests for generations after.
After the Cousins War… the Wars of the Roses… we enjoyed peace and prosperity. Our numbers grew again, slowly but surely. Even the turmoil of the First World War passed us by.
But the Second World War brought German planes and German bombs. Sister Alpha remembered the press of the Ottoman swords 500 years prior and our Third Era ended and the Third Exodus began.
We purchased a cargo ship and work began to refit it as a transport. Large vats were installed and the lategum were transferred to them by rail car.
We thought we may all escape Britain alive, but that was not to be. A lone German fighter plane and a British plane were skirmishing in the sky above our train, and the German pilot was lucky. He got position and crippled the British plane.
Our Defensor Magnus at the time was like Sister Alpha, an animal that had been joined to a Lategis, only he was an Eagle, and he could still fly despite having been… enhanced to a humanoid form by his Lategis.
He saved the British pilot and our train but at the cost of his own life.
We gave him a burial at sea on our second day out of port.
We cruised south from Britain, past the Straits of Gibraltar, along the African coast and then East into the Indian Ocean. We skirted South of Australia and into the South Pacific.
Our freighter was nearly out of fuel when we made landfall here and made our home in an abandoned bunker. Literature and signage that we found told us this had been an American supply base, but with some work, it became home.
With insufficient land to farm, we fished harvested fruit from the trees and focused on science. In a very short time became the world's leading authority in the field of Genetics, creating the first known viable human-animal hybrids.
We avoided conflict despite the world going mad around us, and finally, in 1979 we were finally recognised as our own nation under the Pacific Trust. The United States relinquished all claim on our island and we had a land of our very own. In 1983 when the Pacific Trust was dissolved, we became a truly independent nation as well.